Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/339480 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IFS Working Papers No. 25/08
Publisher: 
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London
Abstract: 
The optimal design of incentive contracts critically depends on whether the tasks performed by agents are complementary or substitutable, yet empirical evidence on this remains limited. This paper develops a novel empirical strategy to identify complementarities and substitutabilities in tasks, even in the absence of contract variation across agents, provided the incentive contract is piecewise linear. We apply this method to data on the management of chronic diseases by UK family physicians and find evidence that some tasks are complements, while none are substitutes. These complementarities may explain the widespread adoption of incentive contracts in healthcare. Furthermore, our findings suggest that healthcare systems centred around family physicians, rather than specialists, could achieve significant efficiency gains by consolidating complementary tasks under a single provider.
Subjects: 
Integrated care
Chronic disease
Work organization
Substitution elasticity
Incentive to perform
United Kingdom
JEL: 
I11
I18
M52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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